4. Movements before and parallel to the English Reformation

Early in the 14th century new movements of thought challenged the church. One of these was called Nominalism. William of Okham challenged the kind of theory that Aquinas had been teaching. He claimed that universal concepts had no existence. So it was not possible to construct systems of thought by the use of reason. And it was therefore not possible to understand God by the use of reason. This meant that all the doctrines of the church had to be taken on faith. They could not be proved by reason.  This scepticism had a big impact on the church, and although it was condemned by the church, the teaching found its way into the universities and had a long influence, including on the Reformers.

John Wyclif, from Oxford University, was one of the greatest philosophers of his day. He taught that the true church was spiritual and invisible and was made up only of the saved. He thought that the visible church, ruled over by Popes and bishops could not be the true church. He also taught that Christ had lived a life of poverty and the church was a purely spiritual body without any possessions. He thought authority in the church was based on the Bible, and that all the church’s teachings and practice should be tested by scripture. That is why he wanted everyone to be able to read it. He also strongly opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation (the idea that during the Mass the substance of the bread and wine was changed into the actual flesh and blood of Christ). He encouraged the translation of the Bible into English, but in 1407 all the English versions of the Bible were banned. After his death in 1384 his followers, called Lollards (which means people who talk nonsense), continued to read his writings but were generally oppressed and were unable to develop his teaching any further.

In Bohemia, Jan Huss the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Prague, was attracted to Wyclif’s ideas. He spoke out for Reform of the church but was excommunicated by one of the three popes. He appealed to a General Council which met in Constance in 1415. It settled the problem of the popes but condemned Huss. He was burnt at the stake. A national uprising in Czechoslovakia followed his death. Some of his followers (Hussites)  eventually settled in Moravia and became influential in England at the time of the Wesleys, in the 18th century.

Other reforms and changes were attempted in the later part of the 15th century. Savonarola in Florence tried to reform the lives of Christians and the church. He persuaded people to give up their wealth and to live simple lives. He was very popular for a time in Florence but eventually the Pope and the church was too strong and he was burnt as a heretic. In England William Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early years of the 16th century.

Tyndale was an Oxford scholar who was forced to flee to the Netherlands because of his beliefs. In 1525-6 he published his New Testament in English. His English Bible became the basis for all future English translations of the Bible. Before his death about 16,000 copies of his English Bible had been smuggled into England.

He was killed in the Netherlands in 1536 by officials of the Holy Roman Emperor with the approval of the Bishop of London and Henry VIII.

In Italy humanism began to develop as scholars rejected the debates of the scholastics and began to seek understanding of human life through ancient literature. There was a new interest in the writings of ancient Greece and Rome. As a result of the spread of the Ottoman Empire many old manuscripts found their way from places in the East such as Constantinople (Istanbul) to Europe, carried by refugees. Scholars gathered ancient texts and published new editions of them. This movement became known as the Renaissance.  Printing presses were developed in the 15th century and new ideas began to spread.

In northern Europe a new movement called Devotio Moderna began to transform the lives of Christians. The aim was a simple life full of prayer and acts of worship. New monastic communities were founded. Erasmus, a Dutchman, was an Augustinian monk who had been influenced by the Devotio Moderna. He did not like the life of a monk and instead was able to become an editor of texts. He turned to theology, learned Greek and then produced new editions of the early Latin and Greek Fathers and, in 1516,  a new edition of the Greek New Testament. This made a big impact on the way Christians understood their faith because it gave them a different understanding of the text of the New Testament. Before that time people read the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, translated by Jerome in the 4th century. It was Erasmus’ Greek New Testament which was the crucial bible in the hands of the reformers.

In 1517 Martin Luther, a German monk, challenged the church of Germany and eventually the Pope about many of the abuses that had developed in the church, for example the sale of indulgences.

Many of these abuses were based on the idea that people had to do good works to be saved, or that the merits of a holy person could be added to their own good works.

Luther translated the Bible into German so that German Christians could read it in their own language instead of Latin.

One of the most important issues in the Reformation was how people were justified by God. Luther said that the clear message of the Bible was that justification was by faith alone. His understanding was helped by his study of Augustine.

In 395 Augustine became bishop of Hippo in North Africa. His writings about the church and about salvation have been important ever since. In 1490 a Swiss printer began to print a new edition of Augustine’s works (it took 16 years to complete). A new study of Augustine influenced many in the church. Martin Luther was one of them.

Luther, a monk in the Augustinian order, was a lecturer in theology at the University of Wittenberg. His lectures on Psalms and Romans led him to a new understanding of justification by faith. In 1517 he nailed 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, inviting others to debate matters which he thought should be changed in the church.

Luther’s protest was not only about abuses in the church. He was driven by the great idea that people were justified by God through faith because of God’s grace. He had learned this idea from Augustine and the Bible.

Luther was later excommunicated by the Pope. Many Germans and others followed Luther and a movement of reform spread across northern Europe.

Luther and some of the secular leaders of Germany issued a Protestation in 1529 affirming their reforming beliefs. From then on they were called “Protestants”.

Luther did not reform everything in the old church. He was not worried by images. He thought transubstantiation was wrong, but believed in a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Communion (a view that was different to that of Calvin, Cranmer and Zwingli). He thought clergy should be permitted to marry.

Huldrych Zwingli read Erasmus’ Greek New Testament in 1516 and his thinking began to change. He saw that the church of his day was different to the church described in the New Testament. Zwingli became a preacher in Zurich (in Switzerland) in 1518.

His two main contributions to the Reformation were his ideas about the Lord’s Supper and his teaching about the covenant.

Zwingli said that the bread and wine in the Communion were symbols that were meant to remind us about Christ’s death. He did not agree with Luther’s view. However other reformers such as Bullinger (who followed him in Zurich), Calvin and Cranmer expressed their theology differently to Zwingli.

Zwingli’s idea of the covenant was developed further by other reformers. It helped provide a theory for infant baptism, a basis for moral behaviour and a way of relating the politics of a state to the Bible. His idea was that some of the covenants God made with humanity were conditional (laws were to be obeyed) and some were unconditional (God’s grace was given without conditions). The covenants were also made with a group, eg a nation or a tribe. So all the people in that group were under the covenant. They benefited from it and had to obey it.

Jean Calvin was a Frenchman who fled from persecution in Paris to Basel where he wrote the first edition of his famous “Institutes of the Christian Religion” in 1536. That year he went to Geneva where he was asked to become a teacher in the church. He was asked to leave in 1538 and went to Strassburg.

In 1541 he was invited back to Geneva. As well as his ”Institutes”, revised in 1559 just before his death, Calvin is also known for his preaching and exposition of scripture.

In Geneva he was able to work out a new structure for the church. He said the New Testament had four functions of ministers: pastors, teachers, elders and deacons. The pastors and teachers together formed a Company of Pastors. The elders were responsible for the discipline of the church.

This became the basis for the structure of other reformed churches.

The Council of Trent met in three sessions, 1545-1547; 1551-1552; 1562-1563, in Trent, a little town in North Italy. It was called together by successive Popes although the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V wanted it to be held in Germany, and the King of France did not really want it to be held at all. No French Bishops attended, and the Council was  dominated by Italian bishops, although in fact the Popes held the real power. Despite the Emperor’s hope, the Council rejected any compromise with the Reformation churches. Some of the statements of the Council were responses to particular statements of the Reformed Confessions. The Council’s decisions strengthened the traditional Roman Catholic doctrines, although they did tidy up many of the abuses of their system.